> Eloquent, moving, and more-or-less exactly what people said when cameras first hit the scene.

This is a non sequitur. Cameras have not replaced paintings, assuming this is the inference. Instead, they serve only to be an additional medium for the same concerns quoted:

  The process, which is an iterative one, is what leads you 
  towards understanding what you actually want to make, 
  whether you were aware of it or not at the beginning.

Just as this is applicable to refining a software solution captured in code, just as a painter discards unsatisfactory paintings and tries again, so too is it when people say, "that picture didn't come out the way I like, let's take another one."